The Year of the Lord's Favor
Prayer and celebration will mark two services in Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. During a festal Holy Eucharist on November 4th, Bishop Jefferts Schori will be “invested” as Presiding Bishop for a nine-year term. An All Saints Sunday service on November 5th will include her official seating in the cathedral. She will preach at both liturgies.The Episcopal News Service reports “in her sermons, Bishop Jefferts Schori will call on Christians to live the gospel – especially in terms of eradicating poverty, hunger and disease, both locally and globally, as advocated in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. These goals “help us live our faith in practical ways by relieving suffering, caring for creation, and educating all children — girls as well as boys,” she has said.
In the gospel lesson, Jesus reads from Isaiah 61, one of the bishop’s favorite passages, which Jesus takes as his own mission “to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted; to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor ...”
This blog is a place to share responses to that invitation: to reflect together on "the year of the Lord’s favor."
Luke 4:14-21 [NIV] Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."
posted by SUSAN RUSSELL at 7:28 PM
2 Comments:
I have three sermons to post here. Luke 4 is very important to me, and to anyone who wants to follow Jesus and live out the Good News that he preached.
The first is the sermon I preached at a living wage rally in support of Ohio Ballot Issue 2 this Nov. The rally was part of the Let Justice Roll campaign. (See www.letjusticeroll.org) The second is a short reflection on Luke 4 preached to seminarians in the chapel at Sewanee. The third is a sermon concerning the Millennium Development Goals, preached at my present parish, the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Athens, OH.
(1) let justice roll
Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
These words are filled with FIRE. They were first spoken more than 2700 years ago, by the prophet Amos. But they were also spoken, again and again in our own time, by that uniquely American prophet, Martin Luther King. Dr. King was able to speak in the public square in a way that invited ALL people to join in a sacred movement for justice. King was a disciple of Jesus and a martyr of his Church. He was also a gift for all humanity.
King was not afraid to speak out of the distinctiveness of his own Christian tradition. He spoke as a pastor, indeed as a Baptist preacher in the prophetic tradition of African American Christianity. King was a leader among an oppressed People, who had survived slavery only to face systematic segregation and violence. He was the descendent of Christians who were taught “Slaves, obey your masters” but instead heard “Let my People go.” He was an apostle of love, who lived out the Good News of Jesus in a way that speaks powerfully, if dangerously, to us today. King spoke as a Christian, but, in so doing, he appealed to deep longings of every human being for freedom and righteousness, for brotherhood and sisterhood, for what he called the Beloved Community.
King also had a unique ability to appeal to the better instincts of this country. He referred to the unfulfilled promises of America, which has never fully matched its rhetoric with its ACTION, especially when it comes to people of color, to women, and—yes—to working people . “I have a dream,” he said, “that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.’”
Our passage from Amos makes a fierce indictment against God’s People. In it, God condemns our worship if doesn’t serve justice. God says: “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies…Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.” When King spoke these words, he was indicting America, just as surely as Amos indicted God’s people Israel. King lived, as we do, in an America where people dare to worship GOD, but ignore the prophetic demand for justice at the heart of the Scriptures. Year after year, we see politicians who stand against everything Dr. King fought for, making pious speeches on the day of his birth. We have made him a saint, perhaps, so that we might dismiss him more easily.
How easily do we forget that King’s vision was not limited to ending legal segregation! How easily do we forget how he confronted our nation with a shining vision of a beloved community that has not yet arrived! King’s dream was not limited to racial justice, though we should be quick to add that even here, his dream, like America’s promise, remains unfulfilled. If anything, in the last thirty years or so, we have moved backwards. King’s dream included peace and justice among nations. It also included justice and fairness for working people.
King stood with working people, as they fought for better wages and working conditions. He was assassinated in Memphis, where he had gone to support striking sanitation workers. Frequently in speeches, he connected the labor movement to the movement for civil rights. In a 1965 address, he said that the labor movement was “the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old-age pensions, government relief for the destitute and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life.” In another speech, he said that he knew “of no more crucial civil rights issue facing Congress today than the need to increase the federal minimum wage and extend its coverage.” King went on to say that “a living wage should be the right of ALL Americans.”
It is therefore fitting that the nationwide campaign for a living wage is called “Let Justice Roll!” We are continuing in the legacy of Dr. King, as well as that of the biblical prophets. It is no accident that the NAACP has endorsed this campaign, along with the National Council of Churches of Christ and many religious bodies, including my own Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Unitarian-Universalist Association, the Presbyterian Church USA, the United Methodist Church, the American Friends’ Service Committee, the American Baptist Convention, and many, many more. These bodies have endorsed this campaign, which is working toward initiatives similar to Ohio Ballot issue Two throughout the United States, because this is the right thing to do. Many of these traditions have strong and explicit social teachings about economic justice that single out a living wage as a basic goal that members and congregations should pursue.
The Roman Catholic Church has been advocating a living wage since Pope Leo XIII issued the encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ 2006 statement speaks in a particularly eloquent way in favor of what amounts to a growing ecumenical consensus:
Work has a special place in Catholic social thought: work is more than just a job; it is a reflection of our human dignity, and a way to contribute to the common good. Most importantly, it is the ordinary way people meet their material needs and community obligations. In Catholic teaching, the principle of a living wage is integral to our understanding of human work. Wages must be adequate for workers to provide for themselves and their families in dignity. Although the minimum wage is not a living wage, the Catholic bishops have supported increasing the minimum wage over the decades. The minimum wage needs to be raised to help restore its purchasing power, not just for the goods and services one can buy but for the self-esteem and self-worth it affords the worker.
This statement resonates not with an isolated proof text or two, but with the central themes of the whole Bible. It also agrees with the best moral insights of many who claim no particular allegiance to the God of Abraham.
Again and again, the Hebrew prophets remind God’s People that they were slaves in Egypt until God set them free. Again and again, the prophets call God’s People to more faithful observance of the covenant. Central to this task is establishing justice for poor people, immigrants, and the oppressed, especially widows and orphans. The New Testament continues in the prophetic tradition, and it is equally clear and unambiguous: “If you do not love your brother or sister whom you do see,” says John, “You cannot love the invisible God, whom you don’t” Jesus teaches us to pray “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” He also teaches us to love our neighbors as ourselves. In the Bible, love means action. Our worship must serve justice or it is offensive to GOD.
My friends, we are gathered here in part to reclaim economic justice as a religious and moral value. God forbid that when we hear of “values issues” or “Judeo-Christian values,” we think primarily of who is sleeping with whom. In the Bible, God is concerned with issues of war and peace, with preserving human dignity, and with establishing basic norms of justice and fairness. Why do we forget this so easily? A living wage, defined as a wage sufficient to sustain life with dignity for oneself and one’s dependents, is a crucial moral issue in our time. Human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. To treat them as expendable commodities, who may be bought and sold for a price, with no thought given to their well being, desecrates God’s image and is an affront to our Creator.
In the second creation story in Genesis, work is presented as part of God’s intention in creation. There is no one to till the beautiful and abundant garden of paradise—so God makes Adam, the earth creature, to till the soil of the ground. The world and everything in it is a gift from God, given into our care. By our labor, human beings cultivate the earth and bring forth our daily bread. After the expulsion from paradise, labor becomes more difficult. We earn our daily bread by the sweat of our brow. But the ability to provide for ourselves and our families is a gift from God, which God never takes away.
Of course, this is taken away. But, when it is, it is taken away by sinful human choices. Then as now, the grasping greed of human beings leads us to appropriate more of God’s gifts than we need. Our rapacity is at the root of the environmental crisis, which now threatens the very ability of the earth to sustain life. It is also at the root of a grave and worsening distortion of interpersonal relationships, which destroys community among those who were created brothers and sisters, and ends in poverty, hunger, sickness, and death.
Those who have too much acquire the ability to put people to work for less than a living wage. They also acquire the power to keep them working, even when it is killing them. The Bible names this oppression, literally the pressing down and crushing of others under heavy burdens. The People of Israel were oppressed in Egypt. Because there was famine and they were hungry, they sold themselves to Pharaoh, who put them to work making bricks. As they began to seek freedom, Pharaoh added to their burden, forcing them to make more and more bricks with less and less straw.
I have a feeling that those who work for minimum wage in our country today feel a bit like the children of Israel did. I also believe that our choices as a nation and indeed as a global economy have gotten us into such a mess that many feel they have little hope. All of us are at the mercy of forces beyond our control. But friends, there is always hope for justice. My faith tells me that justice will one day spring up from the earth. Dr. King taught us that “The arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.” It may be longer than some of us hoped, but what he said is still true. Working together, by the grace of God, we will begin to make choices that will one day establish liberty and justice for all. I still believe, as King did, that one day this nation will rise up and live out the meaning of its creed, that all people are created equal.
Year after year, the purchasing power of the minimum wage goes down. It does not keep up with inflation. People work harder and harder for money that will buy them less and less. Issue Two, the Ohio Minimum Wage Amendment, does not yet establish a living wage. It will, however, be an important first step in the right direction. It will give a three thousand dollar a year raise to those who are living on two hundred dollars a week. It will also secure an annual cost of living increase for the poorest of Ohio’s workers, so that they are not forced to make bricks with less and less straw.
Issue Two is a small but significant step toward restoring people’s God-given ability to provide for themselves and their families with dignity. It is a small but significant step toward fairness. I urge you to get out and vote “Yes on Two” this November 7th. And, after we pass Issue Two, which we will with your help, let’s think about what’s next and work like hell to make it happen. Movements are not stationary. Unless we fall asleep, this will only be the first small trickle of the waters of change.
Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
(2) Luke 4:14
May God give you peace!
Jesus isn’t making this up. Neither is Luke. These are the words of Isaiah the prophet:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Thus says the Lord through the prophet Isaiah, chapters 61 and 58. These are old words. Ancient words. Words filled with grace and power.
If there’s anything new here at all, it’s the way Jesus applies them to himself. “Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Jesus is the Lord’s Anointed, the Messiah. The Spirit of God rests on him. He brings good news of God’s gracious favor, of God’s justice, of human freedom. In Jesus, God’s Kingdom is at hand.
Scandalous enough to claim that kind of thing for himself. And yet Jesus goes further.
In Luke, Jesus begins his ministry with a sermon about the ways God acts to save outsiders.
“There were many widows in Israel,” says Jesus, “in the time of Elijah, but he went only to a widow in Sidon.”
“There were many lepers in Israel,” says Jesus, “in the time of Elisha, but he healed only Naaman the Syrian.”
Our Lord’s first sermon is scandalous, very much like the words of the prophets. Like them, he is nearly killed for his trouble. “But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.”
Beloved, the Spirit of God is a wild, uncontrollable Spirit. This Spirit stretches and breaks open God’s people, so that outsiders might come in. This Spirit is holy, unquenchable fire. This Spirit brings life in the midst of death to poor and oppressed people everywhere. It spoke by the prophets. It rests on Jesus…….It also rests on US.
Brothers and sisters, we have been sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever. May we preach the same good news for which he lived and died. A Gospel of freedom, a Gospel of life, a Gospel of peace.
Amen.
(3) Welcoming children
May God give you peace!
“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes ME.” These are our Savior’s words, written in the Holy Gospel.
Jesus says something very similar to us in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew. Referring to those who are hungry, thirsty, naked, or sick, as well as to those who are prisoners or strangers, he says “As you did it to the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you did it to ME.”
Once again, elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus makes a similar point about missionaries: “Whoever receives one whom I send receives me.” We might say that children and other people who are little in the world’s eyes are missionaries. Jesus sends them to us to preach the Gospel. And, to do so, they don’t have to say a word. By their very presence among us, they proclaim the Kingdom of God.
In these sayings, Jesus identifies himself with others, especially with those who are poor and suffering. This is the biblical basis for our baptismal vow to “seek and serve Christ in all persons.” His choice of children, like God’s choice of the poor throughout the Scriptures, is based on their vulnerability and their need for help. In the Exodus story, for example, God chooses Israel, not because they are a great nation, but because they are being oppressed and God hears their cry.
As Christians, we find expect to find Christ in ALL people. It is especially important that we look for him in children and the poor. This is part of the great reversal that happens in God’s Kingdom. God turns the world upside down. The last become first, and the first become last. Little ones begin to lift themselves up in the strength of Jesus, the risen Messiah. It would not be an exaggeration to call this God’s Revolution, although, unlike most revolutions, it is utterly non-violent.
Neither the poor nor children should be romanticized. Anyone who has worked with either knows that, as individuals, they can be just as sinful as the rest of us. Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement, who lived her life in community with the poor, liked to remind people that it is not because they are particularly good that God chooses them, but because they need help. But, as Dorothy knew well, it is also because they bear the sins of our society in a disturbingly acute way. In particular, our greed and violence fall disproportionately upon the shoulders of the little ones, whom Jesus calls his brothers and sisters. Throughout the world, women and their dependent children are especially vulnerable. I am convinced that the burden of our sins will not be lifted fully from us until we turn toward Jesus in the poor. We, with them, are harmed by our broken relationships, by our chosen isolation that destroys community and leaves death-dealing poverty in its wake. As our Catechism teaches, we are made to live in harmony—with God, with each other, and with the earth. One of the chief purposes of the Church is to restore the community of creation, which we have broken through our greed and violence. It’s for this reason that we promise in Holy Baptism to “seek and serve Christ in ALL persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.”
As I was preparing to preach on the passage from today’s Gospel about Jesus and children, I was speaking to Tracey on my cell phone. She was picking our son Danny up from school, and I was on my way to bring communion to a member of the parish. It was Danny’s first day back at Beacon School after a day or two out with strep throat. I asked Tracey if they were glad to see Danny—“they” meaning his teachers and the other folks at Beacon. At first, she misunderstood me and thought I was talking about her: “Of course, I’m glad to see him,” she said. But then I explained. I was really thinking about how each member of the staff at Beacon, not just the teachers and aides in Danny’s classroom, tend to greet him by name when he arrives in the morning and to say goodbye by name when he departs at the end of the day. They seem genuinely glad to know Danny. Now, this really impresses me. It takes a lot of effort to instill this kind of active hospitality in an entire community. I’d like to know their secret as we begin to train greeters for Good Shepherd and to ask ourselves how we might become more welcoming as a parish. But that’s a sermon for another day. Back to Tracey and her answer to my question. What she said was, “Yes, they were very glad to see him.” And then I said something that took me by surprise. “Isn’t it great,” I said, “to have a school that really loves your child?”
Hospitality is a revolutionary virtue. By it, we welcome strangers into our lives. We create safe spaces for strangers to be themselves. We welcome them into our homes and hearts, without requiring them to change. Hospitality is a bit like God’s creation of the world. God establishes creatures in their own distinctive being. God lets creatures be. Without competing with them. Without coercing them. God allows them to be what they are and to be free. Assimilation is the enemy of hospitality.
So is xenophobia, the fear of strangers or foreigners. Indeed, the Greek word for hospitality is xenophilia, friendship with strangers. The funny thing is, hospitality does change us. We are necessarily changed when we enter into new relationships. The differences others bring into our lives challenge us to stretch and grow. But not in the way that coercive models of cultural assimilation might suggest. Rather, friends help us to become more fully ourselves. Indeed, they become internal to our self-definition, so that, without ceasing to be who we are, we come to define ourselves in relationship to them. And we in turn help them in similar ways.
Children too are strangers. The sooner we realize this, the better. Like the Lord Jesus, they defy our expectations. Welcoming any child, like welcoming the Christ child, changes us forever. An entire family must readjust itself and its emotional dynamics, as it begins making room to receive a child, who will bring God knows what. Blessings to be sure, but also grief. Joy, mixed with heartache. It’s true of most human relationships worth having.
A child will not flourish unless he or she receives an active welcome. We literally love children into being. This is one of the reasons for the service in our Prayer Book entitled “A Thanksgiving for the Birth or Adoption of a Child.” This service frames the entry of a child into a family in terms of Christian love, recognizing that loving a child to maturity is a long and patient labor in the Lord.
It’s great when we have families and communities that love and welcome children. That truly are safe places for them to grow and flourish over time. Too often, we do not.
At the same time, we might ask whether our communities and our families are so hospitable to the other little ones Jesus names—to the least of these, his brothers and sisters, namely to the poor.
How do our society and our families make a safe place for them? How, if at all, do our society and our families encourage community and solidarity with the poor? Wouldn’t it be great if we loved these children of God? If we knew them by name, so that there burdens became our own.
Some of us do. But all too often, those who are hungry, naked, thirsty, or sick, as well as those who are prisoners or strangers, meet with little hospitality among us. They meet with a closed door, if not a stick or a gun. And lest you think I’m climbing up on a soapbox and ignoring today’s Gospel, let me remind us that many of these persons, the poorest of them in fact, are children, along with their mothers.
Today, I challenge this parish to begin to think about our outreach programs. We have demonstrated our concern for the poor. As individuals and in some cases as a community, we do serve them. Nevertheless, I challenge us to think about how we not only meet immediate needs, but begin to attack the root causes of poverty. This month we will begin a conversation about how we might make a difference in this town, in our region, and in our world. The outreach committee will meet soon (look for an announcement in the newsletter) and we will make a proposal to the Vestry about how to allocate resources and spend our time and energy to form partnerships that make a difference for the little ones whom Jesus loves.
In addition, on October 19, an ecumenical coalition, myself included, will sponsor an event at Christ Lutheran Church in support of the National Council of Churches’ Let Justice Roll Campaign. This is a nationwide campaign. In Ohio, we are seeking the passage of the Ohio Minimum Wage Amendment, which will be on the ballot this November. As people of faith, we are trying to educate the public about the moral issues involved, when working people are not able to meet their basic needs. How can they for $200 a week in take home pay? At Cardboard City last week, some of us were privileged to hear our brother Keith Wasserman, the founder of Good Works, preach an impassioned sermon that demonstrated in great detail that people cannot meet their needs for this amount of money. Keith ought to know. He works with people who have become homeless, people he reminded us who come from neighborhoods like ours. He Keith urged us to be intentional about forming relationships with poor people and to ask all candidates for public office about their friends who are poor. This is not a partisan issue. Churches are not free to advocate for a party or a candidate, nor should they be. The Episcopal Church, moreover, only appeals to the conscience and does not tell members how to decide on any issue, partisan or not.
Nevertheless, as churches, we are free to speak to moral and social issues. Despite what the IRS is now doing to my colleague Ed Bacon and All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Pasadena over their opposition to the Iraq War, this is our first amendment right. More importantly, even if were illegal to do so, our discipleship demands that we speak out on behalf of poor and suffering persons everywhere—and that we work tirelessly to end the causes of their suffering. A living wage is a moral issue—indeed, a life and death issue for some—and I believe it is addressed directly by the Gospel.
The Episcopal Church is already committed to a living wage. In 1997, 2000, and 2003, our General Convention urged Episcopalians to advocate a living wage at all government levels, in every diocese and every community throughout the United States. As a Church, we are currently committed to raising the minimum wage to $8.70 an hour, which is more than the Ohio initiative calls for but less than a living wage in some parts of the country. As early as 1908, the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops was calling for a “just wage.” At 7 p. m. on October 19, I urge you to attend the meeting at Christ Lutheran Church, to hear the evidence for yourself, and then to vote your conscience this November.
But for now, remember that, in the portion of Mark’s Gospel we heard today, Jesus continues to redefine what it means to be powerful. Those who are great in his community, Jesus says, will be those who serve. For Christians, he is suggesting, strength is found in solidarity and service and never in domination. And so, Jesus puts a child among them, as a sign of all those whom they must serve, and says “Whoever welcomes one such child, welcomes ME.”
I won't be preaching this Sunday (the deacon got dibs). When I do, I like to remind people that when they were baptized they were anointed and received the Spirit, so they, too, can (and should!) say: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for God has anointed me . . ."
But this year, on the following Sunday (when we get chapter 2 of this story, the downside) I mean to read from The Cotton Patch Version of Luke and talk about the life of Clarence Jordan, who lived this story to the full, including the attempted murder, and never faltered.
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